GC: Ageia Takes Dedicated Physics Proccessing Mobile

For anyone who has a passionate disinterest in gaming this is not going to be your week. The 2007 Games Convention in Leipzig opens officially tomorrow, but already the news mills are grinding out announcements so fasten your seatbelts.

First off the mark (at least in my Inbox) is Ageia announcing the release of the mobile PhysX M100, a dedicated physics unit for notebooks. Keeping the same processing power as its desktop counterpart, the M100 takes the physics workload of the CPU in supporting titles. You'll even get to access the thrilling Ageia Island level in GRAW 2 for the first time on a laptop.
If you aren't aware who Ageia are or what PhysX is then I can't really blame you. When it launched back in 2006 the format didn't exactly rocket to success and renown. Still, Ageia is still plodding determinedly on and support does seem to be picking up as time progresses as hinted by the imminent Unreal Tournament 3; not only a PhysX supporting title, but a Triple-A title as well.

While many of us will simply suggest you upgrade to a shiny, new and importantly fastCore 2 processor or even Quad, for those of you who want a bit of gaming on your laptop that option isn't available. In this case, being able to free up a bit of processing time could well offer a tangible benefit to mobile gamers.

The price premium that is going to be added for the privilege of adding a PPU to your notebook is yet to be revealed, but with the desktop parts costing in the region of £100 one would expect it to be significant.